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Courtesy of Special Collections
Marshall University Library
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The Fesenmeier Brewery survived both the 1913 flood and, as seen here, the 1937
flood.
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HUNTINGTON --
When the former Fesenmeier brewery closed in 1971,
it marked the end of West
Virginia's once-flourishing brewing industry.
The
Fesenmeier family came to America from Germany in 1851, when Michael Fesenmeier
brought his bride to a farm in Cumberland, Maryland. He had learned to make beer
as a boy in Germany,
and shortly after the Civil War he began a small brewery on
his farm. The brewery soon outgrew its small
quarters and was moved to
Cumberland proper, where it continued to grow under Fesenmeier and his sons.
After the
elder Fesenmeier's death in 1893, his sons continued to run the brewery. In
1899, when another
expansion seemed in order, they came to Central City and
purchased a defunct brewery that had been built
at Madison Avenue and W. 14th
Street in 1891. They reopened it under the name West Virginia Brewing
Co. Soon
the brewery was widely known as the home of "West Virginia Special Export" beer.
When
his brothers returned to Maryland, John J. Fesenmeier stayed on to run the
business here.
The brewery
survived a disastrous fire in 1905 and the flood of 1913 but it couldn't survive
the state of
West Virginia's enactment of Prohibition in 1914, five years before
the rest of the country.
John J. Fesenmeier converted the business into a
meat-packing plant. When he died in 1922,
his brother Michael returned from
Maryland and converted the plant to an ice and ice cream business.
Sensing that
Prohibition was soon to be lifted, the company took a gamble, installed $300,000
worth of modern brewing equipment and began brewing and stockpiling beer. On May
5, 1934,
the first day that beer could again be legally sold, the company - now
renamed the
Fesenmeier Brewing Co. - had 250,000 gallons ready for the thirsty
Huntington area.
For the next
couple of decades the company thrived, but ultimately the national beer brands
like
Budweiser and Miller, with their multi-million-dollar advertising and
marketing budgets, squeezed
small brewers like Fesenmeier out of business. In
1968, the brewery was sold to Robert Holley of
Huntington, who operated it as
the Little Switzerland Brewing Co. until filing for bankruptcy in 1971.
A year
later the block-long brewery building was demolished to make way for a shopping
center parking lot.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Oct. 27 , 2014
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